Posted by girt25 on 3/9/2013 9:14:00 PM (view original):
Posted by gillispie on 3/8/2013 12:52:00 PM (view original):
do people frequently just get tickets for a venue, and figure they will go watch anyone play? ive bought tickets trying to guess where UK would go (bad idea, guessed wrong, had to sell em), but other than, the only time i went somewhere UK wasnt playing, was to watch butler play in the championship in indianapolis, as it was only an hour or so away. we had tickets hoping UK would make it, or i probably wouldnt have went. i guess it would be fun, but i wouldnt think it would be a regular thing... just going to see any random people play. just wondering if many others do that.
side note - buying NCAA tickets for the final game is a HORRIBLE value. you can easily get tickets at the game for about 30 bucks. really my experience is such that i wont even consider buying tickets for any bball games anymore, not online, its such a rip off. scalpers are seemingly always cheaper. sometimes the first game of the 2 games (or first session of the two) is about comparable, but then you save huge on the second session, and can get some banging seats, especially if you are sitting near fans of the other team.
Jeff -- as a basketball fan, absolutely! Are you kidding?
If anything (Big Ten Tourney, NCAAs) is in Chicago, I'll go. I also go to the Final Four every year (since '99). Just lots of fun, great basketball.
As for your comment re: buying tickets in advance online -- absolutely correct, you will end up paying more almost every time, sometimes a lot more. This is true for nearly every sporting event I've ever been to, and there's been a lot of them. (That said, claiming that you can just get tickets to the title game for $30 isn't true, either. I'm not saying that it's never happened, but if you went every year and that was your expectation, you'd end up sorely disappointed. And any tickets you can get cheaply will be bad ... there are a lot of baaaad basketball seats in the football stadiums that they're playing in.)
The single biggest driver of F4 ticket prices is really the proximity of schools to the site. If there are one or two schools within semi-reasonable driving distance -- like the Illini to St. Louis a few years back -- then tix will be tough. If all the schools are all a plane ride away, then you can usually get a decent deal if you're patient. There are other factors (notably size of the school ... ie VCU or George Mason won't bring the level of fan support that Ohio State or Michigan State would), but proximity is by far the most important.
interesting (same goes for the other guys who said they go). my inhibition is usually the distance, and the price - if there were games being played close by, and it wasnt very expensive, id definitely be interested. id probably go for the 2nd session at least, assuming i could get tickets cheap on site.
i definitely agree the 30 dollar tickets will be bad, but its really no different than the 180 dollar tickets you get in the NCAA lottery (although, those are for both games, i suppose). ive only been to the title game twice, but there was a **** TON of 30 dollar tickets around, not even negotiating. it does depend who plays to some extent i guess, but i think the years i went, would have had higher than normal prices. maybe im wrong, i cant remember the duke/butler final 4, but butler is local and duke is a major national player, so i would think those would have been relatively hot tickets, compared to the average NCAA tournament. now, if 90% of the fans are there for 2 schools, and both made it, i could see it. but in new orleans, UK was by far the biggest fan base (as one would expect), and i really dont think ohio state had kansas, at least, not significantly. and even then, for UK-KU, both major national programs, there were a ton of guys getting rid of those 30 dollar tickets.
actually, i lied, i was in san antonio as well, for UK UCONN. i didnt even go to the final though (i preferred to spend the remainder of the trip with my wife, getting wasted, and so we did). my dad, who is into the whole optimizing the scalping situation thing with me, was able to get like 125 bucks for our tickets i think (for the pair), but they were the 2nd of 3 levels, and he found a buyer several hours before hand, like in a bar or something, where prices will be more reasonable. i cant remember if he said they were 30 exactly, but i do remember he said it was a pretty similar situation to indianapolis (butler/duke), where there were a bunch of cheap tickets everywhere before the game.
so anyway, it sounds like you've been to a bunch of these - when did you see something different? or were you really just discounting those upper level tickets you get in the NCAA lottery, as worthless? i sat lower level for all the UK games last year, was even 8 rows back, 3 point line for indiana (that was as good as we got), so i wasnt really up for the 30 dollar tickets myself. but that was mostly because im a passionate UK fan, sitting upper level for butler duke was still a lot of fun, and if it wasnt a UK game, id have no problem sitting way up there.
3/9/2013 11:01 PM (edited)